> Outsider art, outsider music refer to art, and even in those practices a lot of celebrated artists are the ones that eschew the established norms.

Which is what I said, in different words. If you understood the term, why did you ask what it meant?

> If so many people swear by Calibre

There’s no true alternative. A lot of people use Calibre despite how it looks, because it does all the things. The world of messing with ebooks outside the vetted stores isn’t that big.

> It is not only about the aesthetic design trends.

I didn’t even so much as hint that. Please don’t straw man.

> They don’t need to apply a coat of liquid glass and modern icon treatment to make it well designed.

Again, didn’t even so much as suggested that. I personally dislike Liquid Glass.

> toolbox

Again, there’s nothing wrong with being a toolbox nor have I claimed there is.

> This appeal to authority

There was no appeal to authority. You paid no attention to words in the comment, you fabricated an argument in your head and are fighting that.

Fucking hell, HN is tiring. Stop being so angry all the time, we’re not on opposing teams. Not every comment is a criticism or disagreement for you to rally against.

Calibre is great and I’m happy it exists. I recommend it to people despite not using it myself (I make my own tools). When I used it I found it to be very ugly and at times confusing and found it could benefit from applying some basic well-understood and researched design principles. But that’s all my opinion. You’re welcome to have yours, I don’t care, use whatever you like. Just please don’t mischaracterise my words and don’t come all angry and citing misapplied fallacies at me. I didn’t do that to you and would appreciate the same courtesy. Don’t stoke hate.

Sorry I made you feel like this. There are no shortage of “Calibre but well designed” tools, as long as Calibre has existed. I am just tired of hearing Calibre and other open source apps are badly designed as if that is an objective fact. So I ranted against a general sentiment rather than your arguments in particular and I did not mean to put words in your mouth or offend.

However, when can we accept a design stands the test of time and maybe it is in fact well designed? So many objects that are considered well designed today look that way because they got refined over the time and designed through their goals and constraints. Only in retrospect we call those well designed because they were original and not designed by committee. Can you give benefit of the doubt that maybe Gimp’s, Emacs’ and Calibre’s of the world might be in that category?